Philippe Mathieu

Philippe Mathieu (5 August 1907-) was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the French Army who served as the military commander of Algiers during the Algerian War. In January 1957, he led 4,600 French paratroopers during the occupation of Algiers, and he nearly wiped out the FLN in the ensuing "Battle of Algiers". He employed torture and assassination to decimate the FLN leadership, but public opinion turned against the war, and the military lost its control over politics, leading to the rise of Charles de Gaulle in 1958 and the French withdrawal from Algeria.

Military career
Philippe Mathieu was born on 5 August 1907 in Bordeaux, Aquitaine, France. Mathieu rose in the ranks of the French Air Force, commanding paratroopers. After Nazi Germany occupied France in 1940, he was a member of the anti-Nazi French Resistance, and he fought in the Italy and Normandy campaigns of World War II in addition to the pacification of Madagascar and the Suez Crisis of 1956. Mathieu was a decorated war hero, and he was a veteran of colonial conflicts. In the early 1950s, Mathieu led paratroopers in the First Indochina War against the Viet Minh rebes of Ho Chi Minh, and in 1957 his expertise was called upon during the Algerian War. At the head of 4,600 French paratroopers, he was sent to the city of Algiers to put down the FLN uprising against the French colonial administration.

Battle of Algiers
Mathieu knew that each FLN member knew only the person that chose him and the two people that he chose, and he decided that the way to find out the hierarchy of the FLN was through interrogation and torture. He asked French soldiers to question the population and find out the locations of FLN leaders, and he used torture during the Battle of Algiers to hunt down and decimate the FLN leadership. In 1957, he killed FLN leaders Larbi Ben M'hidi and Ali La Pointe, and he succeeded in pushing back the FLN. The French takeover of Algiers was the first French victory of the war, but the means by which it was achieved led to its reputation being tainted. 24,000 Muslims had been arrested and 3,000 had gone missing, while the French had lost 300 dead and 900 wounded. Eventually, it was low public opinion that led to the French withdrawal, and the failure of the French Army to maintain power in politics led to Charles de Gaulle's new French government (which took power in 1958) ordering a French withdrawal from Algeria and granting independence to the country.